The King of the Fallen

by David Dalglish

  The King of the Fallen

  by David Dalglish

  BOOKS BY DAVID DALGLISH

  THE HALF-ORC SERIES

  The Weight of Blood

  The Cost of Betrayal

  The Death of Promises

  The Shadows of Grace

  A Sliver of Redemption

  The Prison of Angels

  The King of the Vile

  The King of the Fallen

  THE SHADOWDANCE SERIES

  Cloak and Spider (novella)

  A Dance of Cloaks

  A Dance of Blades

  A Dance of Mirrors

  A Dance of Shadows

  A Dance of Ghosts

  A Dance of Chaos

  THE PALADINS

  Night of Wolves

  Clash of Faiths

  The Old Ways

  The Broken Pieces

  THE BREAKING WORLD

  Dawn of Swords

  Wrath of Lions

  Blood of Gods

  THE SERAPHIM TRILOGY

  Skyborn

  Fireborn

  Shadowborn

  THE KEEPERS TRILOGY

  Soulkeeper

  Ravencaller

  Voidbreaker (Jan 2021)

  A recap of The King of the Vile for those who need it:

  An army of beast-men crossed the Rigon River in hopes of conquering land of their own beyond the infertile and cursed Vile Wedge. They laid siege to the North, whose lord begs for help from the capital city of Mordeina. Help, however, is not immediate in coming, despite Harruq Tun’s best efforts in his role as steward to the boy king, Gregory Copernus.

  After the collapse of the flying city of Avlimar, and the rebuilding of the golden city of Devlimar, the angels that now rule Mordan are split into two factions. Ahaesarus leads one faction that would remain subservient to human rule, and wishes to help the innocent civilians in the North. Azariah, however, no longer believes sinful humanity should retain control, and would instead fly south to battle the army of King Bram Henley of the southern nation of Ker, who has invaded in an attempt to overthrow angelic rule. While the angels bicker, the Paladin Jessilynn and elven Scoutmaster Dieredon helm a desperate defense of the Castle of the Yellow Rose, but it looks grim. Without help from the angels, there will be no survival.

  Meanwhile Azariah brings the people of Mordeina into Devlimar, and upon his golden throne, he declares himself their new king. It does not go as planned. From the crowd emerges an unknown, unimportant farmer named Alric. He gives voice to Ashhur’s rage, and orders the angels to fall. And so they fall, their bodies twisted and sapped of color, their wings blackened, their teeth turned to jagged, broken fangs. Azariah himself is anointed with a crown of bone growing from his forehead. Furious, the fallen descend upon all humans within the surrounding miles, slaughtering without mercy in an event known as the Night of Black Wings.

  Harruq and his family fight the fallen angels, successfully protecting their friends and family as well as rescuing king Gregory from their clutches. Once outside the city, they reunite with the Paladins Jerico and Lathaar, who have been protecting villages as best they can against the fallen. The reunions continue, this time with the surprise arrival of the wizard they thought dead, Tarlak Eschaton.

  Tarlak, like the rest of Dezrel, had not been having a good time. Having woken up imprisoned by the Council of Mages, he was given a choice by Roand the Flame, the Council’s leader: join the organization or be executed. Deciding he liked living, Tarlak obeyed while still working out a plan to escape. Part of that plan involved defeating a mage trainee, Cecil Towerborn, in a duel upon the bridge connecting the two towers. He then froze Cecil’s body in secret, and in his final, successful escape plan, projected his soul into the body while his original form was vaporized by one of Roand’s contraptions. Now in Cecil’s body, he freed the also imprisoned Deathmask, killed Roand, and together they fled back to Mordeina…just in time to discover it conquered by the fallen.

  Deathmask remained behind, eager to find Veliana and work to slay Azariah as punishment for Azariah blaming the collapse of the golden city of Avlimar on him and his Ash Guild. Tarlak used his magic to locate Harruq and Aurelia, opened a portal, and rejoined them in a jovial meeting ruined only by the fact that he was still in Cecil’s body. Finally reunited at last, the Eschaton Mercenaries debated a future plan for the people of Mordan, but their only conclusion was that things were, to put it mildly, royally fucked.

  To consolidate his rule, Azariah takes his fallen south, to the retreating army of King Bram. Bram is slain, though his wife Loreina survives to rebuild Ker’s defenses. Amid the army of Ker lurk Paladins of Karak, and they are all too eager to join forces with the fallen king if it leads to a newfound spiritual awakening across Mordan – one where Karak is treated equal, if not superior, to the god Ashhur.

  Meanwhile Ahaesarus and his angels still loyal to Ashhur arrive too late to the Castle of the Yellow Rose. All but Dieredon and Jessilynn are dead. Taking Darius’s sword for his own, Ahaesarus forces the beast-men into servitude, declaring himself their king. They will aid him in defeating Azariah, and in return, he will grant them a land of their own. So begins the third Gods’ War, waged between the King of the Vile and the King of the Fallen. But the story doesn’t start there. It starts far to the south, at Ashhur’s Sanctuary tucked into the Elethan Mountains…

  Prologue

  The great halls of Mordeina’s castle surrounded Bernard Ulath. Corpses hung from the rafters. Blood covered the myriad paintings. The beautiful mosaic carpet had been burned away to reveal cold, gray stone.

  Bernard walked among the dead, and his faith withered. This shouldn’t be. He had fought this fight before. He touched the living dead chained to the walls, his fingertips banishing the foul necrotic magic that give them life. They shattered into dust, but there were just so many, and ahead loomed the throne room.

  “Choose another,” Bernard said. “Please, a younger man. A stronger man. Have I not sacrificed enough?”

  The throne room’s doors were closed. A dozen men and women hung naked above it. Chains looped about their wrists and forearms to keep them upright. They were dead, but still they writhed and wailed.

  There will be death.

  Ashhur’s words, but why? What did they mean? And why did Ashhur yearn so deeply for Bernard to speak them?

  “I can’t,” he said, not even certain what he refused, only knowing that the burden was far more than he could bear.

  He clapped his hands together, banishing the hanging bodies to dust. He would listen to no more of their wailing. With them silenced, he pushed open the doors. Melorak stood waiting before the throne. The pale imitation of Karak’s Prophet spread his arms wide as if in greeting. His robes were deep black, his visage a slowly shifting combination of a thousand different faces.

  There will be bloodshed.

  “Welcome back,” Melorak said. “It’s been so long, priest.”

  “I killed you,” Bernard said. “You exist only in the fires of the Abyss.”

  “That’s the trick about Dezrel. Dead things have a habit of not staying dead.”

  The entire castle shook as if the foundation of the world was furious.

  But it won’t be in my name.

  “Not in your name?” Melorak asked, somehow hearing the voice as well. His maggot-filled grin spread wide. “Then who carries the guilt? Who suffers the blame, priest? It can’t be me. It can’t be my god. After all...we lost. You defeated us. You won.”

  The stone cracked. The walls of the castle crumbled. Bernard grabbed Melorak’s wrist and flooded his rotten form with the power of his faith, just as he had five years ago. It b
urned away the body. It banished his necrotic soul. It did nothing to cease the breaking of the world.

  One final word blasted apart the castle, the surrounding city, and all the rest of the nightmare that haunted Bernard. One word ended the dream, bringing him back to the waking world.

  FALL!

  Bernard sat up in bed and grumbled. The night was still deep, but he doubted he could fall back asleep if he tried. For a week straight he’d endured that exact same dream, and always it ended with that final cry to fall. It wasn’t the first time someone had heard that foreboding pronouncement. Every priest within the Sanctuary had heard the words, the denial of death and bloodshed, and the final cry. Every syllable had seemed to shake the stone walls of their home. What exactly it meant, the priests debated fervently, each idea more frightening than the last. So far, they had no answers, only theories.

  “We could send someone to Mordeina to ask the angels,” one of his fellow priests had suggested. “Azariah might know what such a pronouncement means.”

  None had dared go, for they all shared the same deep-seeded fear: what if Azariah had been the target of Ashhur’s rage? The command to fall echoed the fate of Avlimar, which led many to wonder if it had collapsed at Ashhur’s hand and not the hands of an interloper, as was first believed.

  Bernard slid his feet into his slippers, doing his best to dismiss such thoughts. The night was cold, so he wrapped a thin blanket about himself as he exited his room. Sometimes the Sanctuary felt claustrophobic, and this was one of those times. He walked the quiet halls, remembering a time not so long ago when younger priests in training would be scrubbing the stones, replacing candles, and preparing the next morning’s meal. Now there were no new trainees, no new young class striving to replace the men and women walking the original path.

  What need was there of priests and priestesses, whose prayers Ashhur did not answer, when the sky above was marked by the flight of angels?

  The stone hallway was silent. He passed flickering candles and approached the front door. Bernard removed the metal bar locking it shut, followed by the wood block across the center. The door was a recent addition, and not just by the ancient Sanctuary’s standards. Qurrah Tun had broken the first, and then its replacement had been claimed by fire during the second Gods’ War.

  “Not exactly better days,” Bernard chuckled. “But certainly more interesting ones.”

  He’d not been there for either of those events, given his station in Mordeina at the time, but the Sanctuary’s previous head priest, Keziel, had been eager to regale him with the tale when Bernard settled into the Sanctuary some five years ago. Old age had claimed the man’s lungs only two years prior.

  A foul burn settled into Bernard’s throat as he exited the holy building. There had been a time he could have prayed over the dying priest’s chest and cleaned away the illness clogging his lungs and denying him air. That power had faded from him, and from all of Ashhur’s priests, after the war god’s death and Ashhur’s apparent turning of his gaze from Dezrel so he might rest with his beloved Celestia.

  What need was there of his prayers, he thought again bitterly, when Ashhur’s angels guarded the skies?

  The forest had recovered nicely from the blaze that had claimed much of the surrounding woodland. He walked along the forest edge, enjoying the sound of the leaves rustling in the breeze while observing the beauty of the night sky. A long walk was his preferred method for soothing restless dreams, had been ever since he was a young man.

  Tonight, though, there would be no relief, for an angel approached from the north. Bernard crossed his arms and waited, unsure of why he was suddenly so nervous. He held no reason...no reason, but for the dreams, and the phantom cry to fall.

  The angel neared, closer and closer, yet his wings remained dark. A trick of the moonlight, Bernard prayed. Far better than the unknown alternatives. He resumed his walk back to the Sanctuary’s entrance, keeping just beyond the trees to ensure the angel would notice him during his approach.

  The angel descended from the sky, confirming all of Bernard’s fears.

  “What fate has befallen your children?” Bernard whispered. This was no trick of the moonlight. The angel’s skin was ashen, his feathers withered and black, his robes dull instead of white and lustrous. His armor, once a vibrant gold, now looked twisted and crafted with bone and tar. Bernard clenched his hands into fists. In his mind, he felt the presence of a power that had been gone for him for five long years. That it would awaken now, of all times...

  “Who flies before me?” Bernard called out. “You bear not the red wings of Thulos’s war demons, yet neither do you bear the white of Ashhur.”

  “A friend, if one is still willing to listen to reason and accept offered wisdom,” the angel replied. He lowered to hover a half-dozen feet above Bernard’s head. A spear was strapped to his back, its edge jagged and stained with dried blood.

  “I would not judge you by appearances alone, but I fear Ashhur’s grace may no longer be with you, angel. What wisdom might you offer me?”

  The angel’s calm smile flickered momentarily. In the brief drop of the facade, Bernard saw a seething ugliness, a rage that defied reason.

  “My name is Raegar, and I bring the wisdom of one who has walked the verdant lands of eternity. I bring the wisdom of a soldier who fought at the vanguard of the oldest war. Karak and Ashhur, brothers once, brothers still. They were enemies in a time forgotten to all but us, and we seek an understanding that would join their beliefs and desires to recreate the land of Paradise. Would you listen, priest, or are you beholden to old ways that now descend into irrelevance?”

  Bernard felt a stirring inside his chest, familiar as the dawn, once comforting, now terrifying. He dared not dwell on it. His hands shook. The faintest shimmer, like captured moonlight, glinted in the corners of his vision.

  “What might you tell me that I would not dismiss outright?” he asked. He stared up at this being, once a beautiful creation, now stolen of all that had once been beautiful or noble. “I watched Karak burn the world. I witnessed the destruction unleashed by the horde of undead created by his prophet. If you would speak to me of peace with Karak, then I will hear none of it. Be gone from here, angel, and take your heresy with you.”

  The burning in his chest grew. A presence settled over his shoulders like unseen, comforting hands. If this angel noticed, he did not speak of it.

  “Old men and women hiding in a mountain at the end of the world,” said Raegar. “I should not be surprised you are too set in your ways to listen. I will spare you the lessons, if you are content to remain absent from our reborn Paradise, but only if you cooperate. I seek the boy king, and I have reason to believe he might be hidden here at Ashhur’s Sanctuary. Is he with you, priest? Do you hide him within your walls?”

  The angel had been stripped of Ashhur’s presence, and now he hunted the rightful heir to the throne of Mordan? Bernard did not know what transpired in Mordeina, but he feared the absolute worst. He met Raegar’s gaze and let the weight of his every single year upon Dezrel carry in his voice.

  “Whether he is here or not, I will not answer you. My god has cast you aside. We faithful heard his words throughout all of Dezrel. It has pervaded our dreams. It has haunted our waking steps. The command was clear, and I see it in your withered wings. Fall, Ashhur demanded of you, and I see it true before me. You may fly through the air, but your souls crawl through the muck. Begone from here, angel. I fear not your reprisal, nor your wisdom.”

  Raegar removed the spear from his back and flipped it so its point aimed downward.

  “I will search your halls for the boy king,” he said. “And if I have to do it over your corpses, then so be it.”

  Bernard could never hope to defeat the angel through physical means, yet he did not attempt to flee. Instead, he stood perfectly still, the burning in his chest fully consuming him with such power that there was no room for disbelief. His prayers would no long
er go unanswered. Ashhur had returned to him, and it was his familiar voice that whispered in his ears.

  My eyes are open, and I am ready. If there must be war, let there be war. I stand with my faithful.

  There had been a time when his god’s presence had comforted him, but not like this. Not when the words he spoke were the embodiment of rage. Bernard lifted his hands; shimmering wisps of light sparked off his fingertips.

  “Now they open,” he said, and he looked up to the fallen angel. “But at what cost?”

  Raegar dove with his spear leading, moonlight shining off its jagged tip. From within the center of Bernard’s raised palms rolled a blinding shield of purest light. The spear’s metal tip shattered on impact. The twisted bone shaft cracked and split down the middle. The fallen’s momentum ceased, and he hovered in mid-air, paralyzed by light, clutching his ruined weapon. Amid it all flowed a deep, distant song, like a choir singing a single stubborn note.

  “I faced the culmination of Karak’s rotten faith,” Bernard said, the shield of light slowly pulsing in rhythm with his heart. “I stood against the Prophet. I broke the corpse of Melorak and denied his hold over his undead dragon. But you, you wretched angel? You are but a pale shadow. I will hear nothing of your wisdom. My ears are closed to your lies.”

  The shield rolled outward, brighter, stronger. Swirling lines throughout it sparkled like lightning, enveloping his foe’s body with a sudden, booming cry. Bernard watched with stoic silence, though inwardly he trembled. This power he felt...it was far beyond anything he had wielded in the second Gods’ War. This awakened magic, this new fury, was terrifying in its intensity. The fallen angel’s body, already ashen and withered, crumpled away like so much banished dust. Not a shred of it remained that was not blown apart upon the wind.

  Bernard lowered his hands, ending the prayer. With the fallen angel’s death, and the darkness that followed the banishment of his shield, the priest dropped to his knees and wept.